Wednesday, November 19, 2008 10:08 PM CST
TIF is off to flying start in midtown
By HERB MEEKER, Staff Writer
hmeeker@jg-tc.com
MATTOON — It all started with moving a fire hydrant for a building project.
That was the first official use of midtown tax increment financing money in Mattoon. Rob Perry had a building project on the 1700 block of Marion Avenue and wanted to cut out the costs of the hydrant move. The cost was $1,000 paid in the city’s Fiscal Year 2005.
Two dozen projects later, ranging from facade renovations to roof repairs and even storm water detention work, the city has committed $993,000 in TIF money dispersals through 2015. That money is generated from the property tax increment, which is the amount of tax paid on the increased property assessments past the assessments of the startup year of the TIF district in 2004. A TIF is designed to set aside that property tax benefit to assist commercial development through grants, which in turn increases the property tax increment more.
But the TIF grants are only part of the story. Developers and business owners in recent years have invested $3 million or more in redevelopment of structures and properties just along Broadway Avenue, which is part of the Phase I area of the midtown redevelopment through TIF incentives, said Mattoon City Attorney and Treasurer Preston Owen. So the TIF grants help, but they are only a fraction of the money invested in these building improvements.
“We’re taking in about $100,000 to $125,000 through the TIF incentives each year. And we have agreed to disperse about $100,000 over the next 10 years. We don’t have that $990,000 up front yet,” Owen explained. He added that 20 percent of the TIF incentive is distributed each year to taxing bodies in the district, including Mattoon schools, Lake Land College District, Mattoon Township, Coles County and the airport authority plus the city itself.
Mattoon City Administrator Alan Gilmore said the TIF grants appear to be priming the pump for entrepreneurship in the midtown, the oldest business district for the city founded 153 years ago as a railroad town. The midtown defined in Phase I is bordered by 22nd Street to the west, 14th Street on the east, Richmond Avenue as the north boundary and Charleston Avenue to the south. But the whole TIF district takes a large chunk out of the center of the city, including a corridor along part of Lake Land Boulevard.
“There is a good entrepreneur spirit here. This has really taken off,” Gilmore said. “At the rate we’re going now the midtown is becoming an attractive area for development.”
That was the hope when the city approved the midtown TIF in late 2003. The old business district was blighted with deteriorating storefronts or shuttered businesses. The future was not bright.
Within two years, several TIF grant applications came into Mattoon City Hall. The sound of power tools were heard in some vacant storefronts. Then came some grand openings for new businesses.
“Some of these project would not have been viable without the TIF,” said Gilmore, who has worked in city management positions in three other Illinois communities during his career.
The past fiscal year has witnessed TIF assistance to 10 commercial projects, including retailers, a realtor, restaurant and even a car wash. All but one are located along Broadway Avenue.
Without the infusion of TIF funds into the investment mix, Owen believes demolition not development would have been the watchword all along Broadway.
“If we didn’t have this the Midtown would look very different today,” he said.
There are still concerns in the midtown. Several storefronts are empty. There are concerns with walls and facades. Plus, the economic meltdown is a concern on the future of development in the town.
But right now, there are several projects lined up for TIF money, Gilmore said.
“We have five or six in the pipeline right now,” he said.
Now the city has three other TIF districts, located along the South Route 45 corridor, the Broadway Avenue East business corridor and the I-57 East area. The hope is those TIFs will be as successful as the midtown has been by drawing private investment.
Contact Herb Meeker at hmeeker@jg-tc.com or 238-6869.
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dman wrote on Nov 20, 2008 5:46 AM: